CatholicVote.org » Familyhttps://www.catholicvote.org
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 17:57:01 +0000en-UShourly1A Pro-Life Politician Goes Horribly Wronghttps://www.catholicvote.org/a-pro-life-politician-goes-horribly-wrong/
https://www.catholicvote.org/a-pro-life-politician-goes-horribly-wrong/#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 13:51:42 +0000Joshua Bowmanhttp://www.catholicvote.org/?p=65826Arkansas State Rep. Kim Hammer had a strong record of defending life. He was a co-sponsor of bill in the Arkansas Legislature to ban abortions after twenty weeks and supported another bill to ban abortions when a heartbeat can be detected. However sterling his pro-life bona fides though, it cannot excuse his most recent proposal to provide subsidized IUDs for single mothers on welfare. Meanwhile, radical pro-abortion liberals are now complaining that his proposal doesn’t go far enough, while at the same time admitting that sterilization programs for the poor, especially in the South, have a dark and terrible history.

Strange Bedfellows: Margaret Sanger and Kim Hammer

The evil legacy of eugenics should give one pause. The founder of the pro-abortion movement, Margaret Sanger, is regarded as nothing short of a saint by her followers today, but in her day, she enthusiastically embraced the vile and ghastly ideas of white supremacy and racial purity which were then fashionable. Those same ideas inspired a whole host of abuses, most notably the forced sterilizations of racial minorities, prisoners, and the disabled.

Representative Hammer rationalizes his proposal by saying that single mothers should be able to take “a little bit of a breather to think about their life decisions that are affecting us as taxpayers.” Perhaps Mr. Hammer is the one who needs to take a breather to think about his decisions that are affecting the lives of single mothers. The government should not be in the birth control business in the first place, but it is intolerable to suggest that bringing life into the world is merely a question of dollars and cents. It should be a wake-up call for Mr. Hammer to find himself agreeing with Margaret Sanger and Ruth Bader Ginsburg about eugenics and population control.

Moreover, it is the great tragedy of our time that this idea that providing “free” (i.e., taxpayer funded) contraception is somehow helping women. As the Blessed Pope Paul VI prophetically wrote in the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968:

Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

It is unquestionably a great social evil that single mothers must have recourse to the government to provide for their basic needs. However, the solution is not to degrade and defile women by treating them as a line in an accounting ledger or a soulless cog in the machinery of the state. Rather, the question must be asked, why are these mothers single in the first place? Where are the fathers?!

Our culture is deeply sick. The sexual revolution has come at a terrible cost which has been most severely and harshly borne by the poor and the infirm. The failure to care for widows and children is one of the greatest of all injustices which cries out to heaven for vengeance. This misguided and inexcusable legislation from Representative Hammer is a part of the real “war on women” which liberals are so fond of attributing to Republicans. Sadly, for once, this accusation is true.

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/a-pro-life-politician-goes-horribly-wrong/feed/2Top 10 Things Catholics Don’t Have to Believehttps://www.catholicvote.org/top-10-things-catholics-dont-have-to-believe/
https://www.catholicvote.org/top-10-things-catholics-dont-have-to-believe/#commentsThu, 26 Mar 2015 08:35:45 +0000Matt Bowmanhttp://www.catholicvote.org/?p=65795Easter is a time for initiating people into the Church. In many Catholic parishes this happens through RCIA: the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.

But what do you have to believe to be Catholic? There’s a lot of confusion about this in public discussion. Current popular opinion says that under Pope Francis the Church is more open, more welcoming, more willing to offer full communion to people who diverge from Church teaching.

If Pope John Paul II was known for his opening exhortation “Be not afraid!” Pope Francis’s most repeated (and misconstrued) quote is “Who am I to judge?”

This supposed openness has an ironic flip side. Liberal Catholic pundits will defend giving communion even to Planned Parenthood award winners. But those same liberals are busy heaping up more and more “teachings” that they say Catholics must believe, or else.

The recent death penalty debate is a good example. Conservative Catholics will make the case that the death penalty can be permitted, and even why it is a good idea. But very few conservatives will say you are a bad Catholic if you oppose the death penalty.

The liberals are the ones being unwelcome and exclusivistic. They insist that being Catholic necessitates opposing the death penalty. The Patheos Catholic portal’s anti-death penalty statement repeats, as if it forces a conclusion, the mantra “We are Catholic” “We are Catholic” “We are Catholic.” That’s not an argument, it’s a bludgeon. It repeatedly suggests that if you don’t agree with them on this issue, you are not really Catholic and maybe not even Christian.

It’s true that on some fundamental policy issues, the Church’s moral teaching requires that we take a position. For example, “don’t kill babies” (abortion must be illegal). Or, “male and female He created them” (marriage is between a man and a woman). Or, Christians must be free to follow Christ’s teachings (the state must respect religious freedom).

But on most other policy issues the Church allows the laity freedom to figure those out.

So to help guide you through what you will not be required to affirm and profess at this year’s Easter Vigil Mass, here are my “Top 10 Things Catholics Don’t Have to Believe”:

1. The death penalty must be abolished. Take it from then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict: “There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”

Note that he was talking about who may receive Holy Communion, which is the ultimate measure of being a Catholic in good standing.

2. All gun control must be enacted. The Church teaches that families have a right to defend themselves including by use of arms, and it teaches that guns should be subject to “reasonable” limits by the state. But the Church leaves it to lay policy makers to decide what limits are reasonable.

Although many bishops have supported gun control, no Church teaching has attempted or intended to bind Catholics to support local gun control measures. Even gun control advocate Cardinal Dolan admits that his judgment on this issue is limited: “I will never be an authority on the number of bullets that should be in an ammo clip, or the proper way to conduct background checks before selling someone a firearm. That’s the proper responsibility of our legislators, and, should constitutional questions arise, of our courts.”

3. The government must redistribute more and more of your money to the welfare state. Catholic social teaching says that we need to care for the poor. But how to do that exactly, and what role the government must play, is left up to the laity work out. The Church does not require Catholics to support the government taking increasingly more money from citizens to expand the welfare state, stagnate the economy and leave future generations with crippling debt.

When Congressman Paul Ryan came under criticism from a Catholic bishop about proposed restrictions on federal spending, Bishop Robert Morlino of Rep. Ryan’s home diocese defended his standing as a good Catholic who seriously seeks to apply the Church’s social teaching.

4. The Internet must be transformed into ObamaNet. Recently Bishop John Wester of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops praised a vote by the Federal Communications Commission to impose “Net Neutrality” and therefore more government regulations on the Internet.
Bishop Wester’s statement focuses on his view that the FCC will protect religious speech. Nevertheless, Catholics are free to take different views on the merits of increasing FCC regulation of the Internet, or on the idea that the FCC has statutory authority to do so in the first place, or on the idea that giving this administration more regulatory power is likely to protect religious speech.

5. The Supreme Court should impose its views on the country. Recent Catholic statements against the death penalty went so far as to invite the Supreme Court specifically to abolish the death penalty.

But even Catholics who oppose the death penalty, like Notre Dame Professor Rick Garnett, oppose achieving this goal by means of “unsound court decisions or possibly-overreaching executive actions.”

6. All bombs are unjust (unless they are dropped by a Democrat). Catholic tradition has a lot to say in principle about when a war may be justly waged, and how to be just in decisions one makes within war. And there are certainly wars the Church could teach Catholics to oppose: Germany’s aggression in World War II for example. But generally the Church leaves the application of “Just War” principles to Catholics in the secular sphere, as seen above in the quote by Cardinal Ratzinger.

The absurdity of liberal Catholics insisting that the faithful agree with them on war issues is obvious under this presidency. We were all told we must support Obama instead of McCain and Romney because of Republican war-mongering, only to see Obama drop more bombs on Afghanistan, open new Middle Eastern wars like in Libya (which has lead to such wonderful results), and perfect his own personal video-game-like drone strike program.

7. Man is causing global warming and must stop burning fossil fuels. Whether man is causing global warming is a scientific issue, not a philosophical, theological or moral issue. The Church will sometimes teach on the moral implications of a scientific issue, like the fact that since science overwhelmingly says human life begins at fertilization, those human beings must be recognized as having personal human dignity.

But the Church doesn’t bind Catholics to specific scientific facts. (And where theologians are wrong on science, like when St. Thomas Aquinas believed a human being didn’t exist until later in pregnancy, then the moral implications they draw from the proposed fact need to be adjusted.)

Nor does the Church say Catholics must agree with a particular way to deal with environmental problems—for example by taxing fossil fuel use or regulating it through international bodies. United Nations elites who fly the world in their private jets are not authorized, morally or otherwise, to tell the rest of us how to heat our homes. Catholics are free to disagree on the policy issue of what to do about so-called climate change.

8. National borders must be eliminated for immigrants. The Church recognizes both the right of migrant people to seek places where they can make a living for their families, and the right of nations to protect the common good by imposing reasonable conditions on their borders and on people they admit.

The Church does not negate either of these principles, such as by requiring Catholics to support relaxation of all immigration restrictions. The precise level and management of immigration is not a matter of binding teaching. Which points to another misconception…

9. That everything any bishop says is binding teaching. Bishops can issue binding teaching on faith and morals. But often bishops don’t intend to require their flocks to strictly adhere to what they are recommending. They may just be offering their opinion for respectful consideration, and we should give it respectful consideration. Or they may be offering general principles while leaving it to the faithful to decide how those apply in society.

Likewise the statement of a bishops’ conference is often intended to express a view on a policy, but not to require Catholics to agree with that view. And as Bishop Robert Vasa has pointed out, quoting then-Cardinal Ratzinger, individual bishops can teach with Christ’s authority, but “episcopal conferences have no theological basis, they do not belong to the structure of the Church.”

There are even statements in papal encyclicals which don’t intend to announce binding Catholic moral teaching. Cardinal Ratzinger again explains: if a teaching is not announced by Magisterium as being divinely revealed (like the Creed) or to be held definitively (like opposition to euthanasia or fornication) then in order for us to know if the statement is binding, and in what sense, and with what weight, we have to measure “the nature of the documents,” “the repetition of the same doctrine,” and “the tenor of the verbal expression.” These can vary widely.

10. That all issues have the same weight. “Agricultural subsidies for the poor” are neither of the same kind nor of the same degree as laws about whether it is OK to kill over 1.2 million preborn babies each year in the United States.

A politician’s support for increased welfare spending does not offset his enthusiasm for insisting on abortion on demand without apology paid for by tax dollars. A pro-life Republican candidate’s hawkish policies do not justify us in voting for a pro-abortion Democrat, especially when she is likely to drop just as many bombs in the Middle East anyway.

The U.S. Bishops summarized it well when they pointed out that human dignity is like a house: there are foundational issues, and non-foundational ones. They were just restating the basic virtue of prudence. Some issues weigh more than others, and some intrinsically flow from Church teaching while others leave room for disagreement.

Jesus wore a “seamless garment.” Left-wing Catholic magazines do not. They often appear not to be wearing any clothes at all.

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/top-10-things-catholics-dont-have-to-believe/feed/87500 Priests in England and Wales Just Signed A Letter That Everyone Should Readhttps://www.catholicvote.org/500-priests-in-england-and-wales-just-signed-a-letter-that-everyone-should-read/
https://www.catholicvote.org/500-priests-in-england-and-wales-just-signed-a-letter-that-everyone-should-read/#commentsWed, 25 Mar 2015 03:04:34 +0000John Whitehttp://www.catholicvote.org/?p=65781

This letter may well be considered a historical document someday.

Nearly 500 priests from England and Wales have signed a letter, published in the UK Catholic Herald this week, in which they state in no uncertain terms that the upcoming synod on the family should uphold the Church’s teaching on marriage.

Hopefully this will be the start of something. Hopefully this will encourage those who value the Church’s tradition and teaching to stand up and say so. Hopefully this will send a message to other priests around the world that yes, they can stand up to Cardinal Kasper, en masse, and tell him with the utmost truth and charity, “no, you are wrong.”

One is instinctively drawn to make comparisons to the great lions of English Catholicism, like Becket, Fisher, and More. This certainly makes sense, for a variety of reasons. But when I saw this letter, the historical image that came to my mind was of a different sort. I thought of a small group of ordinary, tea-drinking, pipe-smoking British blokes crash landing behind enemy lines in the middle of the night and being the first to announce to the enemy that sorry, but we’ve just redrawn the map, and you’re finished.

But we the laity have to ante up too. First off, by using social media and other means to get this letter out there, far and wide. Some of the priest-signatories have also urged the laity to keep in touch with Voice of the Family as a way to make their voices heard – to their pastors, their bishops, and yes, to Rome.

And to all you American priests: You too can do what these priests have done. You can do this. You must do this.

The full text of the letter, and its signers:

SIR – Following the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 2014 much confusion has arisen concerning Catholic moral teaching. In this situation we wish, as Catholic priests, to re-state our unwavering fidelity to the traditional doctrines regarding marriage and the true meaning of human sexuality, founded on the Word of God and taught by the Church’s Magisterium for two millennia.

We commit ourselves anew to the task of presenting this teaching in all its fullness, while reaching out with the Lord’s compassion to those struggling to respond to the demands and challenges of the Gospel in an increasingly secular society. Furthermore we affirm the importance of upholding the Church’s traditional discipline regarding the reception of the sacraments, and that doctrine and practice remain firmly and inseparably in harmony.

We urge all those who will participate in the second Synod in October 2015 to make a clear and firm proclamation of the Church’s unchanging moral teaching, so that confusion may be removed, and faith confirmed.

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/500-priests-in-england-and-wales-just-signed-a-letter-that-everyone-should-read/feed/51Three Popes, One Gospel of Lifehttps://www.catholicvote.org/three-popes-one-gospel-of-life/
https://www.catholicvote.org/three-popes-one-gospel-of-life/#commentsTue, 24 Mar 2015 19:02:36 +0000Stephen Whitehttp://www.catholicvote.org/?p=65730Tomorrow, on the Feast of the Annunciation, we mark also the 20th anniversary of the promulgation of St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae. In that encyclical, the Polish pope insisted that “everyone has an important role to play” in proclaiming the Gospel of Life:

Together with the family, teachers and educators have a particularly valuable contribution to make. Much will depend on them if young people, trained in true freedom, are to be able to preserve for themselves and make known to others new, authentic ideals of life, and if they are to grow in respect for and service to every other person, in the family and in society.

This is what it means to build a culture of life in the broadest sense, the implications of which reach far beyond opposition to grave evils like abortion or euthanasia: human freedom must be directed toward truth, toward “authentic ideals” of life in the family and in society itself.

The culture of life, in which the dignity and worth of every human person is protected and cherished, is the only sure foundation upon which to build an authentic civilization of love. The full dignity and worth of the human person is revealed in the light of the Incarnation: we were made by God, in the image of God, for communion with God.

The more this truth is obscured, the more the true dignity of our own humanity is veiled. A culture which denies truth itself—or denies that truth is knowable or communicable—is a culture that cannot grasp the true worth of human life, let alone defend it.

Pope Benedict XVI understood this very clearly. When we lose sight of the truth about the human person, we lose both a proper sense of the worth of every human life, but we also lose the proper understanding of what it means to be person. A person is not just an isolated individual; a person always exists in relation to other persons, and finds fulfillment in the giving and receiving of love.

Obscure the truth of the human person and what remains is, in then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s famous words, “a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.” The dictatorship of relativism arises when we become untethered from the truth about who we are and what we are destined for. In this state, we are not free; quite the opposite. We are left with only ourselves, cut off from the common ground of truth, with no ability to recognize the true dignity of others. The culture of death and the dictatorship of relativism are thus intertwined; indeed, they are two facets of the very same problem.

Pope Francis picks up on this theme, too, linking it definitively to his great theme of solicitude for the poor. Shortly after he was elected pope, Francis spoke to various ambassadors and diplomats. He spoke of the significance of his chosen name, Francis, for understanding the Church’s closeness to the poor. Then the Holy Father continued:

But there is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the “tyranny of relativism”, which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples. And that brings me to a second reason for my name. Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace. But there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.

Here we see the common thread which runs from the culture of death, through the dictatorship of relativism, straight to what Pope Francis has dubbed, the culture of waste:

This “culture of waste” tends to become a common mentality that infects everyone. Human life, the person, are no longer seen as a primary value to be respected and safeguarded, especially if they are poor or disabled, if they are not yet useful — like the unborn child — or are no longer of any use — like the elderly person.

Pope Francis goes on to tie this “culture of waste” to a lack of respect for material goods and nature itself. As I’ve highlighted before, when we lose sight of our proper relationship with the creator—our origin and end—our relationship with all of creation suffers.

Finally, and for this reasons, what Pope Francis calls the culture of waste, is intimately connected to that materialism—as common in consumerist societies as in socialist ones, according to John Paul II—that reduces man to the sum of his economic choices and ignores the fullness of his freedom and, indeed, the fullness of his humanity. In Centesimus Annus, John Paul II connects our disordered relationship to the material world back to the dangers of thinking about man in primarily economic terms:

When… man is seen more as a producer or consumer of goods than as a subject who produces and consumes in order to live, then economic freedom loses its necessary relationship to the human person and ends up by alienating and oppressing him.

The implications of the Church’s social teaching and the Gospel of Life are far ranging, indeed. Tomorrow’s anniversary is as good a time as any to read (or re-read) Evangelium Vitae. It is worth recalling that the surest antidote to the culture of death, the dictatorship of relativism, and the culture of waste is the proclamation of the Gospel of Life. And what better occasion than the Feast of the Annunciation to contemplate anew the dignity to which we have been raised, and the true source of all our hope:

And the Word became flesh

and made his dwelling among us,

and we saw his glory,

the glory as of the Father’s only Son,

full of grace and truth.

Author’s Note: I have the privilege of spending several weeks every summer helping to lead the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society—studying Catholic social teaching and the thought of St. John Paul II in his beloved city of Kraków. Since 1992, our seminar has been doing its small part to equip young men and women with the tools of the Church’s social teaching, which is to say, forming them with an eye to true freedom so that they may “preserve for themselves and make known to others new, authentic ideals of life in the family and in society.” This summer’s seminar will run from 29 June through 16 July. For those who are interested, you can learn more about the seminar at: www.eppc.org/tms. The deadline for applications is fast approaching: this Friday, March 27.

It’s an interesting moment in the culture, as gay icons battle each other over the notion of conceiving children in other than nature’s way of sex between men and women.

Italian fashion (and, for 23 years, romantic) partners Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana made worldwide headlines by defending the traditional notion of family as a mother, father and their offspring.

In an interview with Italy’s Panorama magazine, Gabbana answered the question “What is family for Dolce & Gabbana?” (Apologies, the answer below comes from Google Translate, but here’s a link to the Italian original):

Gabbana : Watching the thousands of shots that sent us we understand that the family is not a fad. It is a sense of the supernatural. We decided to do this project when we noticed that people copied our advertising campaigns, putting family posing, fully dressed and then posting pictures on social networks. We looked and said: is simply brilliant. People need to belong. Sweet : We did not invent … family. The icon has made ​​the Holy Family, but there is no religion, there is no welfare state that takes: you are born and you have a father and a mother. Or at least it should be so, why do not convince me what I call the children of chemistry, synthetic children. Wombs for rent, seeds selected from a catalog. And then go on to explain to these children who is the mother. But she would agree to be the daughter of chemistry? Procreation must be an act of love, now even psychiatrists are prepared to deal with the effects of these experiments.

Asked if they want to be fathers, there are different answers from Dolce and Gabbana:

G . Yes, I am a son I would do it.

D . I’m gay, I cannot have a child. I believe that we cannot have everything in life, if there is not to say that there must be. It is also good to deprive yourself of something. Life has its natural course, there are things that must not be changed. And one of these is the family.

According to an article in the U.K. Telegraph, Gabbana asked a female friend in 2006 if she would bear a child conceived through artificial insemination (which is obviously not the same thing as IVF, in which fertilization takes place outside the woman’s body):

But he said he did not want his child to have two gay parents, adding: “I am opposed to the idea of a child growing up with two gay parents.

“A child needs a mother and a father. I could not imagine my childhood without my mother. I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother.”

These comments haven’t set well with a number of people, especially gay singer Elton John, who is raising two sons conceived through IVF. He’s called for a boycott of Dolce & Gabbana items (despite being seen in LA a day after that carrying a D&G shopping bag).

In addition, openly gay “Glee” and “American Horror Story” creator Ryan Murphy (who used a surrogate to produce the two children he’s raising with his partner), spoke out forcefully:

“This is not just a gay issue,” Murphy says. “I know 10 women in my life who used IVF to conceive — and three doing it right now. IVF is a scientific miracle that helps loving families fulfill their dreams. To tell them their choices as women — anyone’s choices on family — are not embraced, well, I don’t think they’ll be traipsing off to a Dolce & Gabbana store to buy clothes anytime soon.”

But Gabbana is also not backing down, saying (in an article from the U.K.’s Daily Mail):

The Italian fashion designer, 52, admitted that Dolce and Gabbana could lose ‘some Elton John fans’ in the wake of the controversy sparked by Dolce, 56, describing IVF babies as “synthetic.”

Sir Elton John, 67, launched an online #BoycottDolceGabanna campaign after the comments were published in Italian magazine Panorama and condemned the designer for ‘wagging your judgmental little fingers at IVF.’

Gabbana, who said yesterday amidst the outcry that ‘it was never our intention to judge’, has now hit out at Sir Elton and called him a ‘fascist’. He has also started a #BoycottEltonJohn tag and posted a ‘Je Suis D&G’ poster to his Instagram page.

It came as Italian senator Roberto Formigoni described Sir Elton as the ‘Taliban’, likening him to the Islamic fanatics who murdered staff at the political magazine Charlie Hebdo in a savage attack on free speech.

We have always lived our sexuality privately, we have never shouted it out. They’re just putting words into our mouths, now. They’re saying we are against gay parenting. It’s not true. Domenico only expressed his opinion about the traditional family and about In Vitro Fertilisation. If someone else wants to make different choices, fine, they are free to do it. We demand the same respect.

And regarding John:

I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect this, coming from someone whom I considered, and I stress “considered”, an intelligent person like Elton John. I mean, you preach understanding, tolerance and then you attack others? Only because someone has a different opinion? Is this a democratic or enlightened way of thinking? This is ignorance, because he ignores the fact that others might have a different opinion and that theirs is as worthy of respect as his.”

“[Hearing from him after this] would be useless! It’s an authoritiarian way of seeing the world: agree with me or , if you don’t, I’ll attack you. I even posted the word “Fascist!” on his Instagram.

The many techniques now used to overcome infertility also have profound moral implications, and couples should be aware of these before making decisions about their use. Each technique should be assessed to see if it is truly moral, that is, whether or not it promotes human good and human flourishing. All these technologies touch in some way on innocent human life.

But what Dolce and Gabbana are talking about is not simply overcoming infertility, it’s people whose sexual practices are inherently sterile using these techniques to intentionally create children who will never be given the right to know and/or be raised by both their biological parents, especially not in a loving sacramental marriage.

Where the designers err is in referring to the products of these techniques as “synthetic” — they are not. However it happens, at the moment of conception, all children have equal worth and equal dignity. The Church’s issue is with extraordinary scientific means of conception, the conditions under which they are used, and the long-term implications of that, not only for the children themselves, but for the family and society at large.

But the designers are right in asserting that purposefully tinkering with the human family — the basic unit of civilization — is dangerous and deprives children of the right to their own mother and father. And “purposefully” is the important word. All sorts of things can happen that result in a child not being raised by both its biological parents. That’s just the vicissitudes of life, and we deal with them as best we can, trying to create the best possible situation for the child from the options available.

The serious problem arises when the child is deprived of these rights by a conscious choice of the adults involved, to satisfy their own wants and desires. Adults may have the freedom to make these choices, but the child bears the ultimate burden of the fallout.

On another note, it’s encouraging to see these independent-minded designers remind everyone — especially the purveyors of identity politics — that we are all individuals, and that just because you belong to one group or another, you are entitled to form your own opinions and hold your own beliefs.

The “gay community,” or people who’ve appointed themselves to speak for it, don’t own Dolce or Gabbana and don’t control what they think or say.

As Jesus reminded us, even tax collectors love their own families — the real trick comes when you have to love and respect those with whom you have a strong disagreement.

The Archbishop released a document clarifying Catholic teaching on issues such as the sanctity of all life, the definition of marriage, contraception, and other points of Catholic doctrine. He asked that teachers in Catholic schools “avoid fostering confusion among the faithful and any dilution of the schools’ primary Catholic mission. [They] are expected to arrange and conduct their lives so as not to visibly contradict, undermine or deny these truths.”

He wrote that this was not meant to target teachers for dismissal or micromanage their personal lives. But for the sake of the students, they are asked to notpublicly contradict Church teaching.

And now a group of eight California lawmakers are demanding the Archbishop “reconsider and withdraw” the reforms he instituted. These anti-Catholic politicians accused the Archbishop of being “divisive” and are demanding that he “stop his attack” on lesbians and gays.

The Archbishop responded late last week: “would you hire a campaign manager who advocates policies contrary to those that you stand for, and who shows disrespect toward you and the Democratic Party in general?… I respect your right to employ or not employ whomever you wish to advance your mission. I simply ask the same respect from you.”

It’s worth asking: Why is this group of lawmakers (all 8 are Democrats) trying to get an bishop to change Church policies? I thought members of the Democratic Party believed in a “separation of Church and State”?

But of course, the First Amendment right to religious freedom was not written to muzzle the freedoms of American citizens. That constitutional right was written precisely to protect the rights of all Americans, including Archbishop Cordileone, from ambitious and powerful lawmakers like the eight who wrote that letter.

Standing up to the secular elites is not easy. Bishops who defend the faith are rarely applauded.

That’s why we decided to write this letter.

All Catholics should be thankful for courageous shepherds like Archbishop Cordileone.

He needs our prayers and support. We want him to know CV is behind him 100%.

1. Publicly declaring that I am “straight” counts as ‘too much information.’

I’ve been asking myself what is the real point of coming out as “straight”? Is that really the kind of thing other people are really interested in? Don’t we all have a vast range of sexual impulses and attractions? Does my deeply personal effort to respond chastely to my sexual attractions really qualify as something I should share with others? To what end? Lots of questions about this—if we’re all human and all doing our best to cope with our own call to chastity, why does it matter whether anyone else knows that my particular discernment has to do with my attractions to the other sex? Rather, it would seem more conducive to personal holiness to strive to align my responses to sexual attraction by seeing a confessor or spiritual director. The parish or the general public? Not so much.

2. “Straight” is an imprecise designation of the “group” I find attractive.

Do I find all women sexually attractive? No. With about 3.5 billion females on the planet, if one arbitrarily assumes I find even five percent of all women sexually attractive (about 175 million), what does that really tell me? “Straight” merely states that we find the other sex attractive—not even roughly “how many” of the other sex we find attractive. Does that nebulous fact really make any difference to anyone—including me? Since sexual attractions arise prior to being willed (meaning that we all get to deal with them in the same way—one at a time), what difference does this vague foreknowledge offer me personally?

What happens if one day, after decades of other-sex attraction, I suddenly experience a surge of sexual attraction toward another man? Does that make me “not straight” or at least “not straight enough”? Does it change the fact that I have to make a choice in my will, each and every time I experience any surge of sexual attraction, to either willingly engage that attraction or say no to it?

3. My sexual attractions are about the “one,” not the group.

“Straight” emphasizes a false target for sexual attraction—the experience of sexual attraction is about finding “the one,” not focusing on the five percent I arbitrarily mentioned above. Or, more importantly, sexual attraction is not about what sexual “values” trigger that attraction—if it’s all about an abstract desire for certain types of body parts, rather than a real and human attraction to a concrete, living person, then it’s really a waste of time!

4. “Orientation” is an impoverished category that stops short of sexuality’s full maturity.

There is something decidedly immature about calling one’s self “straight.” It belies a certain lack of awareness that all the experiences of sexual attraction going on inside us have to do with finding our spouses. Discovering “the one”—a future spouse—is made possible through properly discerning our sexual attractions all throughout the building of our relationship with “the one.” And this proper discernment must continue once married, too. “The one” grows old with me, meaning that all those abstract “group” attractions are what I say no to. The sexual attraction I say yes to is to my spouse, my beloved, regardless of whether she is physically different at seventy than she was at twenty! Sexuality’s full maturity means precisely that we have enough self-mastery to set aside those attractions toward others and focus not on the group but upon “the one.”

5. Sexual attraction is ordered, in me, toward making me what I’ve become: husband and father.

But wait—what about meeee! Isn’t at least some of this about what my sexuality means to meeee?

Well, here’s the irony—my “sexual identity” is not rooted in the word “straight.” Rather, it’s rooted in the word “man.” And this identity is not supposed to close in on myself but is instead expressed in terms of how my sexual attractions have assisted me in becoming a true gift to others. This means that “I” live for “Thou”—the beloved, committed to letting that love overflow through our children. My attraction to “the one” allows me to say yes to being both a husband and a father. This changes who I am, fundamentally, shaping how I am called to love and be loved.

And in becoming that self-gift, I cannot say yes to any sexual temptations or attractions that could compromise or diminish my being husband and father. How I express that gift must remain in accord with God’s plan. Which is another compelling reason to say a resounding NO to the label “straight”—it’s a label that inherently and vividly pulls me away from the person I’ve become as husband and father.

“Straight” represents something that no longer matters to me. It can’t matter to me. There’s too much giving to do to be preoccupied or distracted by it.

In a provocative piece for National Review called “Jailhouse Feminism,” author Mary Ebersadt (“How The West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization”) takes aim at the angry, aggressive, frequently vulgar and often obscene face of the new feminism.

Here’s an excerpt:

Second, when today’s woman-talk is understandable, its tone is hard to take for a different reason: It is remarkably aggressive and angry. Fifty years ago, Susan Sontag wrote of what she called “camp sensibility”; this label quickly caught on, and signaled an ethos Sontag defined by artifice, stylization, “neutrality concerning content,” and overall “apoliticism.” Today’s feminism exhibits instead what might be called jailhouse sensibility — a purposefully tough, at times thuggish filtering of reality that is deliberately stripped of decoration or nicety; snarling, at times animalistic; instantaneous in taking offense; in all, a pose toward life more common in a prison yard than among relatively well-off beneficiaries of higher education.

Promiscuity is practically sacramental in this place. It’s all hook-up, all the time, as popular music by self-described “feminist” artists proves handily. In the aforementioned song “Slut Like You,” a quintessential anthem of the day, self-described feminist singer Pink mocks the idea of falling in love, adding, “I just wanna get some” and “Wham bam thank you ma’am / Boo-hoo / I’m a slut like you.” A 2010 video by singer Ciara, co-starring a mechanical bull, was so untoward that Black Entertainment Television declined to air it. Rihanna, who also professes to be a feminist standard-bearer, can make Miley Cyrus’s performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards look like Julie Andrews twirling in the Alps.

One symptom of all this is that trying to find a recent photo of Miley Cyrus that wasn’t suggestive or downright salacious wasn’t easy.

And part of the problem, in Eberstadt’s view, is that the sexual revolution and the ongoing disintegration of the family — along with infantilization of men and the marginalizing of traditional masculinity — has had a seriously detrimental effect on women.

And a bit more:

After all, the revolution reduced the number of men who could be counted on to serve as protectors from time to time, and in several ways. Broken homes put father figures at arm’s length, at times severing that parental bond for good. The ethos of recreational sex blurred the line between protector and predator, making it harder for many women to tell the difference. Meanwhile, the decline of the family has reduced the number of potentially protective men — fewer brothers, cousins, uncles, and others who could once have been counted on to push back against other men treating mothers or sisters or daughters badly. In some worse-off neighborhoods, the number of available men has been further reduced by dramatic rates of incarceration. And simultaneously, the overabundance of available sexual partners has made it harder to hold the attention of any one of them — as has the diminished social and moral cachet of what was once the ultimate male attention-getter, marriage.

In the end, the war between the sexes has casualties on all sides, both for adults and for children (the next generation’s adults). Male and female we are created, and we are designed for union. Women need men, and men need women, and each should be good to the other.

Simple to say and hard to achieve, especially as long as both sexes come at each other from a place of anger, domination and suspicion. Feminism, which once sought to free women, has now imprisoned them in grievance and perpetual victimhood.

Fortunately, as Catholics, we have things like the Theology of the Body to help us navigate a path toward the mutual love and self-giving Christ asks of all His people, male and female.

Image: Miley Cyrus, from Wikimedia Commons

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/prisoners-of-the-sexual-revolution/feed/19Faithful, joyful, fearsome — A Life in the Public Squarehttps://www.catholicvote.org/a-life-in-the-public-square/
https://www.catholicvote.org/a-life-in-the-public-square/#commentsThu, 12 Feb 2015 19:57:03 +0000CatholicVotehttp://www.catholicvote.org/?p=65036

His story is one of mischief, brilliance, conversion, faithfulness, fearlessness, and politics. Until his death in 2009, Father Richard John Neuhaus was a powerhouse in American public life and a monument in American Catholic history, modeling what it means to be a Catholic and an American. His story is not one to miss.

Randy Boyagoda, an extraordinary author best known for his work in fiction, knew that someone had to tell Fr. Neuhaus’ story — and that it deserved to be told well. Earlier this week, Mr. Boyagoda’s biography of Fr. Neuhaus was released by Random House, proving both the author’s brilliant writing ability and the significance of his subject.

As an organization that strives to be both Catholic and American, CatholicVote.org draws great inspiration from the late Fr. Neuhaus, leading us to interview Mr. Boyagoda about the American hero he came to know so well. In short, we highly recommend the book for every American Catholic.

Here’s what Randy Boyagoda had to say in answer to our questions:

What inspired you to write this biography?

Shortly after Fr. Neuhaus died, I wrote a profile of him for The Walrus, a Canadian magazine of ideas and culture, basically arguing that he, Neuhaus, was the most influential Canadian-born intellectual in American life of the past forty years, and probably very few Canadians knew about him. In turn, and frankly underwhelmed by the prospect of writing another conventional academic monograph, I approached Neuhaus’ longtime friend, George Weigel (his daughter and my wife went to college together, by coincidence), to see if anyone was working on a biography. I presumed someone was. When Weigel told me otherwise, off I went.

Neuhaus was somewhat mischievous as a youngster – and very smart. What (or who?) was the most influential “mold” in his life that channeled this energy into action?

I think the key moment happens when he’s a young man knocking about small-town Texas, bored and brainy. A friend he was rooming with, and their local pastor, agreed that Neuhaus’ energies needed to be channeled more productively and they were convinced the best possible channel was a religious vocation. They were right.

Describe Fr. Neuhaus in three words.

Faithful, joyful, fearsome.

Politically, Fr. Neuhaus moved from the left to the right and everywhere in between. Why? How did he maintain public prestige and respect despite his changing allegiances?

His ability to speak beyond his immediate religious and political affiliations had a lot to do with this, I think. In other words, yes, Fr. Neuhaus was a great hero to his fellow left-leaning clergymen and activities in the 1960s and 1970s, and likewise to his rightward readership and colleagues in the 1980s and thereafter, but because he was committed to making a case for religion’s place in public life that was informed by the Judeo-Christian tradition but not limited in audience to those of your own creed, he was able to maintain his influential public profile. Also, he was always a reliably sharp and cogent quote for reporters!

Bipartisanship was one of Fr. Neuhaus’ signature traits. He was famously active in both parties from the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the 60s and 70s to the pro-life movement in later years. This made him a unique man who, in a way, transcended politics. Are all Catholics called to cross party lines?

I’m not sure bipartisanship was exactly one of Fr. Neuhaus’ signature traits. He often claimed as much, and certainly was interested in ecumenical and interfaith alliances throughout his career, but when he was a radical Democrat, he was a radical Democrat, and when he was a neoconservative Republican, he was a neoconservative Republican. I always found his insistence, in his later years, that he maintained his Democratic Party membership a facile means of attesting to his bipartisan commitments. As for whether all Catholics are called to cross party lines, I think the right ordering of one’s religiously-informed principles and priorities for public life translate into political affiliations that are never, ever perfectly aligned, nor should they be. Keeping that in mind is the key, I think, when it comes to party commitments.

The American Experiment was near to Fr. Neuhaus’ heart. He dedicated his life to proposing that matters of faith and theology could not be divided from matters of public life, politics, and culture, even running for office as a Lutheran Pastor. Why was living his faith in the public square so important to him?

This is a great question. I think he was of the view that when we deliberate, together, those issues that matter most to our sense of individual rights and communal responsibility, whether locally, nationally, or internationally, we naturally seek to draw on our deepest convictions. These convictions, more often than not in the United States, are religious in nature. But what exactly does it mean, or involve, when you want to draw on your religious beliefs in addressing matters of public import? How can this be done without affirming a State religion or inviting opponents to call for the total banning of religious contributions in public life? Fr. Neuhaus’ vocation was to offer an often first-person demonstration, in words and deeds, for how to live out faith in the public square.

What is the legacy that Fr. Neuhaus left for Catholics in America?

Fr. Neuhaus’ legacy, I think, involves first of all, any number of religious vocations and conversions that were inspired amongst people who had contact with him and his writings and work. Beyond that, I’d say the very natural way that we debate the place of religion in public life owes a great deal to Fr. Neuhaus’ establishing the terms of this debate, and inviting thoughtful Catholics to make their contributions alongside their fellow citizens.

How many different “sexualities” are there in Catholic moral teaching?

It’s a short quiz—if you guessed “one and only one,” you are exactly right.

This basic truth, of course, is something the culture has gotten exactly wrong for decades. Claiming that “sexualities” exist is the very foundation for the massively proliferating confusion and contention over sexual morality in the last several generations. And we Catholics need to be willing to stand against ideologies that promote the existence of “sexualities,” both in the Church and in culture at-large.

It may be that some readers are somewhat confused at this point—am I being serious? Isn’t this some kind of extremist misrepresentation of Church teaching? Am I really suggesting that, for example, homosexuality isn’t a “sexuality” unto itself, just like heterosexuality? Bisexuality, transsexuality, asexuality, autosexuality, pansexuality—am I saying they really don’t exist?

Well, no—these terms exist to describe attractions and experiences that are real enough. They’re just not sexualities. Rather, they are divergent paths away from authentically human sexuality.

Let’s let the Church interject some clear teaching at this point, right from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. First, in Paragraph 2360, we are taught that “sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman.” Then in Paragraph 2361, we receive an incredibly clarifying quote from Pope St. John Paul II (from “Familiaris Consortio,” 11):

“Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death.” [CCC Paragraph 3261]

How does one realize “sexuality” in a truly human way? One does so only if “sexuality” is an integral part of the “conjugal love of man and woman.” Sexuality, in its one-and-only existing and God-created reality, is ordered only to the love of man and woman that ultimately brings them to marriage.

This is why every other so-called “sexuality” expressed in culture today is something less than a fully human expression of human love—because it’s not properly ordered toward married love.

This belief is so utterly counter-cultural that even many Catholics have difficulty grasping it in its utter simplicity. Indeed, it’s pejoratively referred to now as “heteronormativity” and viewed as virtually discriminatory to assert this. Court cases are now being lost by those in the United States who adhere firmly to this basic principle of Catholic teaching.

The deep and abiding pushback against this teaching is so fierce precisely because acknowledging a singular “sexuality” fully undermines all assertions of identity based on “sexualities.” In this context, “sexualities” is to “sexuality” as “Protestant” is to “Catholic”—to claim that my “sexuality” is different from the one ordered to conjugal love is to make a clear protest against a longstanding reality and to expect that longstanding reality to simply stop being what it is just because you’re protesting against it. But that’s just not how God’s plan for us actually works. The fact that there are “Protestants” doesn’t change the reality that the Catholic Church remains One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Similarly, the fact that people adhere to a plural definition of “sexualities” does not change the awesome truth of God’s plan for creating us male and female and uniting man and woman in marriage via our sexual identity—not as “gay” or “straight”—but as male and female.

Pope St. John Paul II, in his Theology of the Body, spends much time in teaching the essential importance of self-mastery and of every human person’s responsibility to discern whether each and every experience of our “sexuality” is truly something to be willed as being in keeping with authentic purity of heart. In simpler terms, this means that every one of us must interiorly examine every sexual urge, sexual impulse, sexual feeling, sexual desire, sexual attraction —whatever one wants to call it—to determine whether it’s in keeping with authentic purity of heart. How do we determine this? We need to ask whether this or that sexual feeling, in our immediate and concrete circumstances, is or is not properly ordered toward the conjugal love of man and woman—regardless of whether we’re married or not. We can only willingly say “yes” to those sexual impulses, attractions, desires, etc., that are truly ordered toward married love. Anything other than this is an experience of “sexuality” that is not a “truly human” experience.

If I’m married and I experience a surge of sexual attraction toward someone other than my spouse, I’m called to say “no” to that experience. If unmarried, I’m called to say “yes” only to those sexual attractions that, in accord with God’s plan, are there to potentially move me closer toward fully-realized conjugal love with the very person toward whom I experience that attraction.

And let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that we can define such “sexual” attractions as merely those experiences of “desire” for something physical or “biological”—above, Pope St. John Paul II makes it clear that “sexuality” concerns the innermost being of the human person “as such” (as human!) and cannot be reduced to the biological. This means that those sexual attractions that are not directly “physical” must still be examined in our hearts to determine whether they are indeed ordered toward conjugal love, or not. In other words, “sexuality” is not reducible to “whether I want to have sexual relations with” this or that person. Sexuality is rather God’s way of drawing together a man and a woman for that uniquely permanent, exclusive, free, total, faithful, and fruitful communion of persons we call marriage. Sexuality is about that full reality, not just about the “physical” part.

So, courageous readers, how did you do on this short Catholic quiz? Let me know by leaving a comment! And be encouraged—we can stand fast, together, despite the torrents of opposition. Let’s continue to pray for the many in our culture and the many of our fellow Catholics who are still struggling to see this simple truth about “sexuality” as a beautiful shining light in God’s plan for us.